Russ Hair on Beam 5

Parts of BEAM 5 made sense to me but I didn't understand how it held together as a poem. After reading the following by Russ Hair, I found what I was missing!

“BEAM 5, The Voices,” ... is a particularly good example of Johnson’s bricolage because it draws on imagery from Book X of the Odyssey, offering a useful contrast with Pound’s use of the same text in Canto XXXIX.

Hair then goes on for several pages explaining what Pound did. He then makes a very detailed analysis of Johnson's poem which made me aware of of the variety in what I missed. Here is Haur's analysis of the lines at the beginning of the poem.

Johnson’s “loom” weaves together a number of themes. On the one hand, “loom” suggests the apparatus for making fabric, with “the x of the instant” visually recalling the warp and woof of woven fabric. On the other hand, “loom” also functions as a verb, with the suggestion that time looms in the poem, just as “Clouds loom below” in “BEAM 1.” Clearly discernible in North Point Press’s ARK: The Foundations [and the Flood edition shown here' is the infinity symbol “∞” in “loom.” This mathematical term introduces the idea of limitless, unbounded time. Indeed, temporality is implicit in the words “instant” and “time,” and in the word “eon” beginning the following stanza. Notably, this “time” is set against space, which, as “plenum” suggests, is filled by matter.

Hair cpntinues analysing the rest of the poem and then adds this summary how Johnson differes from Pound whhelps also explains why I much prefer Johnson.

The fundamental difference in reading Canto XXXIX and “BEAM 5” is that Johnson does not presume that his reader knows their Homer; neiither does he make it a prerequisite for understanding his poem. Although familiarity with the Odyssey does illuminate some of the text’s nuances, as we have seen, the poem largely operates via a more straightforward set of associations. Simply by recognizing the significance of the loom in “BEAM 5” enables a satisfying, if not exhaustive, reading of the poem.

P.S. Those more famlliar with myth than I am will recognize the signicance of "loom" is that it is the symbol of Circe and/or know that Book X of the Odyssey is about the encounter of Odysseus and his men with Circe. I still haven't read Circe, the recent best-selling novel by Madeline Miller.

BEAM 2 (first part)

You don't have to learn very much about Ronald Johnson to discover that although he'dalready published several books of poetry his wish or dream was to write a big/long/important poem like William Carlos Williams and Louis Zukovsky had. By 1970 he'd decided to undertake this project even though he realized it would difficult and time-consuming. He'd figured out an approach and had moved to San Francisco.

"Beam 2" seems to me to be about what had already happened before he started writing ARK and what he expected would happen as he began writing it.

Beam 2 starts with a prose paragraph that is a scientific description of a lightning strike althoough Johnson wrote it in what I'd call a poetic style. (I'm embarrased to admit it took my reading through it more than once to realize what it is obviously about. I somehow got hung up on wondering about "ice electrons" and missed: "Cloud to ground ... negative to positive .. Positive to negative--the strike returns...."

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I think Johnaon put thw paragraph at the start of "Beam 2" to indicate it had happened before what followed. Moreover, he probably wanted to start includng as soon as possible the kind of scientific information he'd planned to be included in ARK.

I've been reading Ross Hair's excellent but difficult book. Ronald Johnson's Modernist Collage Poetry which (as well as other things I've read) reminds me that my interpretations are much less sophisticated than those trained in poetics who've spent a long time studying Johnson's poems and the notes in his archive. However just because I don't have this backgrond doesn't mean what I think is wrong so much as it is incomplete. Here as illustation is what Hair wrote about part of "BEAM 2".

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For example, there are [in ARK] implicit allusions to the Adamic-Orphic descent of (JohnSon'a Radi os in “BEAM 2”... Thus, she [Eurydice] is implicit in “BEAM 2” in the form of the lightning cloud’s "ice electrons" ....

"BEAM 2" proposes additional instances of descent, as the homophonic pun of “dissent”/“descent” indicates. Implicit in this is Milton’s impious rebel-hero, Satan (and the light-bearing Lucifer) who, in Paradise Lost, falls into "bottomless perdition." "BEAM 2" reminds us that Adam and Eve, as well as Satan, suffered their respective falls because of their dissent. Recalling the "bottomless perdition" in Paradise Lost, Johnson’s choice of "abysm” from the Latin abyssus, meaning “bottomless pit,” reasserts these associations and reminds us that "words // hazard all // Abyss, and / World"....

I undersood the the first two of the last thee louds as meaning: "Surrounded" and "Measured disagreement" I couldn't understand the third, partly because I hadn't noted the pun and hadn't taking the meaning of "bent" as "devoting one's attention to a task." I guess it means Johnson expects difficulties but like Orpheus will return from Hades..

To Do As Adam Did

After reading part of ARK and learning more about Ronald Johnson I decided I wanted to read some of his other poems so I bought a copy of "To Do As Adam Did: Selected Poems of Ronald Johnson" edited by Peter O'Leary. This book, published in 2000, contains O'Leary's choices of poems from each of Johnson's seven published books. (O'Leary is a poet and Johnson's literary executor.)

I found O'Leary's introduction to "To Do As Adam Did" very helpful and enjoyable.

What did Adam do? He named: naming built the Garden he dwelt in, allowing him to see it through words. Johnson recognizes the brain and the universe as mirror images: astrophysics is horticulture; scientific perception is gardening.

Johnson's poetry is nearly devoid of autobiography, confession, or the complaint that often accompanies these modes. Has there been a more blissful poet than Johnson? To read Johnson is to feel the pleasure of Adam naming things.

Needless to say we currently have a number of serious problems to worry about in addition to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic . O'Leary's question might point to why my reading Johnson's ARK and following up its references to interesting ideas has provided me with the perfect mental break.

[Image. Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights (detail)]